vegansaurus!

Vegan Tomato Meat Sauce

This recipe will seem very obvious to a lot of you; for the rest of us who would live in a hotel and order room service every day if we could, this will be a revelation. I hate most commercial tomato sauces because they are too watery and sweet. This recipe is a ragu and is based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Cook With Jamie (for fellow cook-o-phobes, I highly recommend Jamie’s recipes because they are incredibly simple.)

A can of Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes

a nice handful of Yves meatless ground round

Extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

a sprinkling of chopped fresh basil (I cheated and used ground but whatever, I didn’t have fresh! It’s okay)

A basic red table wine (the one I used was French)

Salt & pepper

While the water for your pasta comes to a boil, fry up the garlic and basil in the olive oil. It will smell amazing. After a few minutes, throw in the tomatoes, ground round, and a splash of the wine, along with some salt and pepper. Let that simmer on a low flame for 30 minutes. Try to time the pasta so that it is done cooking close to the same time that the sauce is doen simmering. This is not as difficult as you think.

This would be a good time to clean your dirty kitchen and run the dishwasher. And don’t forget to pour yourself a little glass of that table wine—never cook with a wine that you wouldn’t drink. By the time you are done cleaning up, checking your twitter, and e-stalking your ex-boyfriends, the sauce will have gotten nice and chunky and thick, and the pasta should be done cooking. I trust you know how to cook pasta.

Combine the pasta and sauce. Personally I do not like the taste of the vegan parmesan I have tried, but if that’s your thing, then dress it up! Pour yourself more wine and settle in with some reality television (and please read my other blog, BravoFan) or some shitty intellectual movie you want to watch.

For dessert: Newman-O’s!

Delfina!

I wrote this review of Delfina awhile ago on the Yelp site but I will just publish it here now. Fuck Yelp. I kid, that site is great. I’ll probably update it later but not now, I have about 60 emails to respond to and a million things to do in the hour I get to be on the internet today. Fuck me sideways.

Everyone sit down, Mama has some news.  I went on a date tonight.  That’s right…I’m not sure if you are ready to let your little Laura fly away into coupledom during which time Yelp will become the red-headed step child I am ashamed of and lock in the basement and occassionally beat.  This time, next week, I’ll most likely be engaged to be married.  Unless I’m really not.  Which brings me the actual date.  Here is how the big D went down and I can be 100% honest because I’m like 90% sure this fool is way too cool for school/Yelp.  We met through a mutual friend and he emailed me to ask me to have coffee (GAY) and talk about how the world is fucked.  I, of course, am amenable on the world being fucked front and so I said, how about you buy me dinner (as I am poor AND fat!  some might call me a double threat!) and you have yourself a deal, sir!  and by deal, i of course mean, easy lay.    

Delfina is the ultimate first date place, according to yelpers, zagats, chowhound, my parents and that homeless dude who soft shoe(lesse)s in front of Tartine.  So, I didn’t make the plans but when he suggested Delfina I was like, “PREDICTABLE.  SNOOZE.”  but again, beggars can’t be choosers and I’ve always had a delicious time at Delfina so Delfina it is!  Now, the food was great and the conversation so-so-meh but I have one huge problem with this place and that is this:  the waitresses are freaking Goddesses.  I’m not trying to have a first date at some place where I look like I have down’s syndrome in comparison to these beautiful sirens.  I felt like fucking Beauty and The Beast up in that bitch.  Not cool.  Seriously, first date place, Yelp?  First date if you want your prospective husband to go home and jerk it to the chick who served you Pasta Putanesca!  I mean, for realz. I cry, “uncle” to Delfina.  I cannot win in a situation like this.  You know what a perfect first date place is?  McDonald’s.  And here’s why: They employ actual retards.  It’s part of the leg up program or whatever it’s called which is just darling and I love it AND you can’t help but seem attractive and semi-sane in comparison with the differently abled.  It’s win/win, people!  Man, fools at McDonald’s are having awesome dates and I’m over here at Delfina’s trying to feign interest in what this jackass across from me is blathering on about and it’s damn hard when i want to beat a bitch down based solely on her unholy good looks.  I want to beat her and then make out with her, GOD HELP ME.  When I decided I wanted to make out with the waitress more than i wanted to make out with hipster mc useless start-up across the table, I knew this was not MTB (look it up, people.  we were all teenage girls once.  for some of the women on this site, it was mere weeks ago.)  The other clue that this was not the man for me was at this moment in our conversation:

Date Boy:  God, it’s such a beautiful day today, don’t you think?  And you know what day it is, right?  The first day of spring!

Laura B.: GAY!

Anyway, Delfina.  Delicious and a few vegan options (and the kitchen is very accommodating…upon learning i am vegan, the chef made me spaghetti with all sorts of delightful vegetables in it including my favorite, artichoke hearts! i love those little suckers!  The fries are always amazing…thin and crispy with herbs and salt…POIFECT!) but awful, terrible first date place.  Actually, I’m sure it would be fine if you had a healthy self esteem and sense of your own worth.  Which i’m assuming you don’t as you are a woman.  Even if you are a man who reads my reviews, you are a woman and this world can often be hard on the thinking, feeling lady.  Now, come tell Mama your problems, it looks like she might not be going anywhere for a long, long time.  

I really hope this dude doesn’t read this.

UPDATES FOR VEGANSAURUS:

Well, I now have a super great boyfriend so that has changed*. And Delfina remains a solid choice when you want a plate of no-frills pasta in a semi-fancy environment. You won’t find tons of choices for vegans but sometimes you just want really good spaghetti with plum tomatoes, garlic and extra virgin olive oil. Also, there is an attached pizza place where the crust is vegan so you can get a cheeseless pizza there too. You can also sit out front with your dog. But if you’re gonna do that, just go to nearby Beretta for just as delicious pizza with the options of vegan cheese and vegan sausage AND THEY ALSO HAVE ABSINTHE. Decision made!

*But I’m still not going anywhere, suckas!

Beretta!

Beretta is totally fucking awesome. It’s chic (although I hate using that word because it basically negates its meaning. it’s like the word, “classy”. Nothing that’s classy can be described with the word, “classy”. AM I RIGHT OR WHAT?), it’s hip, it’s the ALRIGHT OUTTASIGHT BEST! Inside, you can sit at the bar, or at a long communal table in the middle or at a table. If it’s warm out, you can sit outside along 23rd st. Even if it’s not terribly warm, they have heating lamps and you own a jacket, you live in fucking San Francisco. They make insane cocktails (some of the bartenders formerly worked at the Tenderloin’s classy Bourbon and Branch), many of which include Absinthe! I love it! My favorite is the Dolores Park Swizzle, which is made with rum, lime, maraschino, absinthe and bitters. It’s served on a mountain of crushed ice. It’s the perfect alcoholic beverage. Or you might choose to indulge in a Hemingway, which is white rum, lime, cane syrup, maraschino and grapefruit! Just thinking about their outrageous drink menu, I want to start drinking at 1:30 pm on a Monday. Jesus, take the wheel!

Now, all that’s fine and dandy. Great location in the heart of the Mission, super sleek interior, outside drinking of amazing drinks but WHAT ELSE, VEGANSAURUS? WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS PLACE? SURELY A PLACE SO PRETENTIOUS-SEEMING AND BOURGIE WILL HAVE NOTHING FOR OUR PEOPLE! And that’s where I say, YOU ARE WRONG AND ALSO A JUDGEMENTAL JERK I THINK I LOVE YOU! Because Beretta serves up some of the best thin-crust pizza in town MADE WITH VEGAN CHEESE (!!!) AND VEGAN SAUSAGE!!! A recent addition to their menu, we vegans must partake of it in mass quantities so that they know it was worth it! And it is! Because it’s DELICIOUS! I got the potato, rosemary, radicchio & gorgonzola dolce, sub vegan mozzarella for the gorgonzola and add vegan sausage! HELLO AMAZING CHEESY POTATO SAUSAGE PIZZA! You can substitute vegan cheese for free on any pizza that already has cheese (love that! In a world that STILL charges 50 cents when you sub soy milk, WTF?!, this switching cheese for vegan cheese thing is just totally wonderful). I think the vegan cheese is Teese but it might be Follow Your Heart, it’s high-quality. They can make almost all of their appetizers vegan too. Try the persimmon salad and the brussels sprouts, both fantastic.

I really love Beretta. It is now about 5 steps from my front door (I’m employing hyperbole, but it’s close.) and so I plan to be there pretty much every night (once the pile of money I’m expecting to land on my face arrives later this afternoon). I’m incredibly excited about Beretta and I want to scream it from the roof tops, I want to dress as a bear and set myself on fire and run down Market Street, screaming its name! Or write about it on Vegansaurus! It was a coin toss, a Russian Roulette if you will. You guys lose, so this is your review. BYE!!!